How To Practice

As is true with most of the Buddhist philosophy, these ideas are
directly transferrable to almost any discipline.
As one small piece of evidence, Bruce Lee has the following to say
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about his study of martial arts:

"Before I started studying martial arts, a punch was just a punch;
a kick was just a kick. After I started practicing martial arts,
a punch was more than a punch and a kick was more than a kick.
After I understood martial arts, a punch was a punch
and a kick was a kick."

This has been one of my favorite quotes for a long time. It resonates
deeply with my beliefs about epiphanic learning. Only recently,
I discovered that this quote is an adaptation from Zen (I’ve heard it’s
from the Diamond Sutra, but I can’t confirm. Perhaps
it’s nothing more than Chinese Whispers
(a
la the Burke quote)):

"Before I started practicing Zen, a mountain was a mountain
and a river was a river..."

When we first consider a new discipline, we take the discipline at face
value. Computer programs are just a bunch of text
in an editor. To oversimplify, each line is just a command that we give
to the computer, and we keep typing them until
we’ve instructed the computer to do everything we want it to do. As we
get deeper into the craft, we apply Phaedrus’s scalpel
(ZAMM).
We slice the concepts mercilessly into categories, dropping the remains
into buckets until we’ve created a complicated web of a system in our
minds.
We use this system to expand our understanding of what the practice of
the discipline entails.

Finally, at least in my experience—but I’ll continue to say “we”, we
reach an epiphanic moment. The moment usually comes at a time
when we haven’t learned any new facts or been given any new special
insight from a 3rd party. Suddenly, we understand. And, again
the discipline becomes a set of simple steps as it started out in our
minds.

These three stages directly correlate to the Dalai Lama’s stages or
practice:

Morality is the act of discovering that there is a need to “practice”.
In programming, this is the moment we discover that it is
“immoral” to simply type commands into an editor until we are finished
asking the computer to do everything we want it to do. We
realize that this is not how “quality” is achieved. For some of us, this
phase comes quickly as we enter a new discipline. For others,
it may never come. It all depends on perspective and motivation.

Next, we move into what the Dalai Lama refers to as “Concentrated
Meditation”. With our new found desire to strive for quality, we start
slicing and dicing, analyzing
our decisions and the decisions of others. This stage is the breeding
ground for complexity and, surprisingly, zealotry. We create or adopt
our taxonomies and
make a commitment to them. We may move from dogma to dogma, but we do so
with a religious commitment and sometimes manic zeal.

Finally, we reach “Wisdom”. This is the epiphanic moment. At this time,
we understand that our conceptual frameworks and complex
categorization were only a path that led to the enlightment of
simplicity. As programmers, this is the moment when we realize that
objects are just objects and functions are just functions. Ultimately,
it’s all text in an editor.

The same can be applied to karate (ask Bruce), music, software
methodology, and happiness itself.

Having experienced these epiphanic moments in multiple fields and
circumstances, the most frustrating thing about them is that I find
myself right back where I started. The concepts are no different from
when I first looked at them. My simple minded assumptions turned out
to be true. But, somehow I had to change for it to “click”.
Something like
Beginner’s
mind, I guess.

Is it possible to skip the second stage? I used to think so. But, I’m
starting to have my doubts. I don’t think it’s necessarily possible
to skip it the first time around. But, why couldn’t my epiphanic
moment as a saxophonist translate to any other discipline or craft?
After all, at this point it’s not about learning facts or consciously
piecing specific concepts together. Might this be a discipline-neutral
skill that can be developed through practice?

(I’m a bit drugged as I write this. Had a wisdom tooth removed. So,
as the buddhists would say, please be compassionate.)